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Robert Michael Nesmith (born December 30, 1942) is an American musician, songwriter, actor, producer, novelist, businessman, and philanthropist, best known as a member of the musical group The Monkees and star of the TV series of the same name. Nesmith is notable as a songwriter, including "Different Drum" sung by Linda Ronstadt with the Stone Poneys, as well as executive producer of the cult film Repo Man. In 1981 Nesmith won the first Grammy Award given for Video of the Year for his hour-long Elephant Parts.

Nesmith was born at St. Joseph's Hospital in Houston, Harris County, Texas in 1942. He was an only child; his parents, Warren Audrey Nesmith and Bette Nesmith Graham, divorced when their son was four. He and his mother moved to Dallas, Texas to be closer to her parents, sister, aunts and grandmother. Bette took temporary jobs ranging from clerical work to graphics design, and developed very good secretarial skills, including shorthand, and, auspiciously, touch typing. When Nesmith was 13 his mother invented a typewriter correction fluid later known commercially as Liquid Paper. Over the next 25 years she and a select group of executives would build the Liquid Paper Corporation into a multimillion dollar international company which she finally sold to Gillette in 1980 for 48 million USD. She died a few months later at age 56.

In 1949 Nesmith, at the age of six, was enrolled in the Dallas public school system. An indifferent student, he nevertheless participated in choral and drama activities during his years at Thomas Jefferson High School in Dallas. He began to write verse poetry. When he was 15 he enrolled in the Dallas Theater Center teen program, where he was featured in several plays.